Thursday, April 24, 2014

Sunday afternoon's walk was darn close to five hours - I didn't quite intend
to go for that long but it was so great that time slipped away from
me. I decided to take a route down to the
river and see what could be found, thinking mostly of wildflowers.
There were lots of those, including a Harlequin Lupine I've never seen
before.

The best part of the afternoon: I was utterly charmed by discovering that beavers are still
in residence in the Chowchilla River. At least one is anyway. I took a
bunch of pictures of the beaver, which I believe to be female because
when she came out of the water to groom, I could see what I think are
nipples. After I figured I had enough shots to feel comfortable that at
least one would be good enough, I just found a spot next to a rock and
watched her swim around. She kept one eye on me the whole time, but it
was so neat to watch. Finally, she popped into a hole in the bank on the
other side of the river and after a few minutes, I took that as my cue
to exit.

This is a view of her grooming on the other side of the river.

I hadn't gone more than a couple hundred yards past that spot when I
saw four of these beautiful male Bullock's Orioles, and at least one
female. It was shenanigans all around - don't know which boy won the
girl, but there was singing, and calling, and flying and chasing and I
don't know what all.

Early Saturday morning, we had a stonemason come out to look at our
new fireplace and talk about ideas for building a nice hearth and
stonework area around it. He got quite enthusiastic about the job as we
explained that we wanted to use local stone and would be fine with
something asymmetric - well the whole thing will have to be anyway
because we're building a bookcase on one side. Evidently, it's a family
business and has been doing work around the area for a long time. We
both ended up with a good feeling about hiring this contractor to do the
work - as long as the estimate comes in close to the range we're
thinking about which we believe it will.

With all that in mind, Dino and I took a walk this morning to the
river to pick out some good rocks to use for the fireplace. We have
some really beautiful river rocks, many of which Dino has already
dragged home to use in building rock walls. We found quite a lot of
nice ones, and I've basically given him free rein to make the final
choices as he'll be doing all the work of getting the stone out of the
river bed and up to the house. It'll be tractor work, but some of the
logistics will be interesting.

He also walked me to the far end of the Northwest Territory to show
me a particular shrub in bloom that he hoped I could identify. Yes - it
was a snowdrop bush, really lovely blossoms.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Sunday afternoon, I really needed to get out and about, not that I need an excuse per se. Grabbed my stuff and walked down to the river; found all sort of wonderful wildflowers. I felt a mite peckish mid-walk, found a good rock to sit upon and dredged up a protein bar from my camera bag. (Side note: I am known for pretty much always having a fallback snack somewhere on my person.) As I was munching, I enjoyed the sight of a Black Phoebe working the same area of river, working hard for her afternoon snack.

I finished the bar and decided to try for a decent shot of the Phoebe, swapped lenses in favor of my telephoto and ended up with this nice picture.

I left the big lens on the camera, packed up my gear in the bag, and hoisted same to continue with the walk. I hadn't walked more than a minute when I spotted movement at the bottom of the hill. Gray Fox! If I hadn't been interested in the Phoebe in spite of the fact I've taken many many pictures of these wonderful birds, I would have never been ready for the fox. Happy happenstance.

I got several other pictures of the fox, including one of it sitting down contemplating whatever it is foxes contemplate, but I like this one because it shows how it moved in the landscape and also I love the idea of a Fox in a Field of Flowers. Note the right ear aimed in my general direction - listening to the clicks of the shutter?

We are: Praying Horse (yours truly) and The Dinosaur (husband of the Horse).

We have a 128-acre ranch in a little valley in the Sierra foothills which we share with oaks, birds and horses. We were finally able to leave the Bay Area behind and move here full time in August 2009, oh blessed event! We are surrounded by wildlife of both the four-legged variety - coyotes, deer, bobcats, foxes, wild pigs, racoons, skunks - and of the feathered type.